ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, January 16, 1997 TAG: 9701160035
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: PULASKI
The closing of a 75-year-old Renfro Corp. plant in Mount Airy, N.C., could send some North Carolinians to the New River Valley where Renfro operations have expanded.
Renfro recently completed a 103,000-square-foot expansion at its Newbern Road plant in Pulaski. Some of the 286 employees at the Willow Creek plant in Mount Airy, which will close March 21, may have a chance at some of the new Pulaski jobs.
"Although closing a plant is never an easy decision, the Willow Creek plant is an old building that is financially expensive to operate, and cannot be used in our future plans for manufacturing," said Mike Bowman, Renfro's senior vice president for operations, in Mount Airy.
He said the equipment and some of the employees from the Willow Creek plant, which opened in 1921, would be relocated at other Renfro facilities. But about 40 jobs will be lost.
Renfro will help employees in relocating. The company will help those who are losing their jobs or choose not to relocate to seek other work.
Bowman said the new knitting and seaming addition in Pulaski would help Renfro continue to grow in a highly competitive industry. The expansion nearly doubles the size of the plant.
Work started last June on the Newbern Road addition, which was expected to add 250 jobs. Pulaski and Pulaski County cooperated in providing a $1 million loan for the project - $500,000 from the county's Industrial Development Authority and $500,000 from the town's Urban Development Action Grant fund earmarked for industrial expansion. NationsBank lent $4.3 million to Renfro for the addition, and $700,000 came from the Virginia Revolving Loan Fund.
The loans included a refinancing of the original building costs, also financed by NationsBank for the first five years of the building's existence. The total financing package was more than $6 million.
Renfro also operates at a plant on Jefferson Street, which it opened in 1987 after acquiring the facility from Virginia Maid Hosiery.
It opened with 25 employees. Today, Renfro has some 1,300 employees, and is the largest employer in the town of Pulaski. It is the world's second-largest socks manufacturer, turning out some 274 million per year.
Renfro had operated in leased facilities in the former L.A. Joe Department Store building in a Pulaski shopping center on East Main Street (Virginia 99), but the Newbern Road addition will allow those operations to be consolidated at the enlarged plant.
The expansion will allow knitting, seaming and finishing operations within the same plant, lowering transportation and handling costs and increasing control over the manufacturing process.
LENGTH: Medium: 55 lines KEYWORDS: JOBCHEKby CNBPAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER